STA218 'Women In Sports Therapy At Therapy Expo 2024' with special guest Sonia Fierro

Music. And we're live. Hey people, welcome to the Sports Therapy Association podcast, episode 218.

My name is Matt Phillips, creator of RunShutLive.com. And as always, this episode is being recorded live on the Sports Therapy Association YouTube channel and on the Sports Therapy Association Facebook page. Normally, this live recording happens at eight o'clock on a Tuesday evening. But as you will have seen, hopefully in the adverts, this episode is actually being recorded at 12 o'clock in the afternoon. And it's I feel so cleansed and it's lovely having a lunchtime episode.

But why are we doing that? Most importantly, well, as I put again in the adverts for this, some of our guests, shock horror, for example, mothers of little ones, don't have the luxury of taking an hour off in the evenings. As exemplified perfectly by our guest in this episode, Sonia Fierro, who will be joining us very soon. Sonia is the new host of the Women in Sports Therapy podcast and community. Some of you will already know Sonia as a hugely popular speaker at Therapy Expo.

But for listeners who are not aware, Sonia has a huge history of working in both private practice and in elite sport, including GB fencing, GB diving, as well as in swimming and in rugby. She's the founder of Recover Stronger with a particular interest in strength, sports and functional fitness and has herself been a competitive powerlifting athlete holding an Italian deadlift record.

So to talk about her own presentations at this year's therapy expo as well as the women in sports therapy q a panel or discussion that's happening in the sta theater at therapy expo we're going to bring up sonia fierro very shortly if you have somehow in your busy lives managed to take pre-lunch hour off like nikki's fans mansfield then do feel free to say hello and when you do join us live then i can bring up your comments like this on the screen nikki

says lunchtime hello from chili Cambridge. It's beautiful. Exactly. This has already sounded like something from the Whartons. If you listen to the podcast and you like the idea of joining us live, like I say, normally it's at eight o'clock in the evenings, but we might start doing, if it proves properly, we might start doing something in the daytimes as well, just to be more inclusive, which is what it's all about. And I'm sure we'll be talking about that later on with Sonia Fiera.

So I think that's all the housekeeping done.

Sit back, enjoy yourself, and let's bring up Sonia Fiera. Hey, Sonia, how are you doing? Hi, good afternoon, everyone. All good, thank you. Good afternoon, it's lovely. This is the first time, you know, this is the first time. I just realised, oh, I can't say good morning, it's past five o'clock. Exactly, it's true, very good, very British, very Anglophone. Thanks so much for giving up the time. I know you're super busy, but it's kind of, I mean, let's get straight into it.

The fact that you are joining us at 12 and you weren't able to join us in the upper episode we did, which we planned, which was with Gemma and Sarah back in 213. That's kind of a little bit what we're talking about, aren't we, with WISTS and everything? Yeah. Yeah, I think that there is this, you know, notion or belief that mums and parents are always free in the evenings after kids' bedtime.

But I think that doesn't actually happen until a bit later, or at least it didn't happen for me yet in two and a half years of having a baby and then toddler, because not all kids are the same. and some have huge sleep issues. We had quite big ones and the evening is still a challenge and I thought that this time I would spare all your listeners of more crying and desperation on camera. I think we had two episodes like that, three with a whisked one and then I didn't make one.

So yeah, it was time to say plans need to change. Do you think getting into the kind of meaning and the goal behind women in sports therapy, do you think the tradition of doing things in the evening at kind of eight o'clock is a little bit kind of patriarchal?

Do you think it was invented by men for men? Or was that going over the top a bit? I don't know if we can say it was patriarchal. I know that, oh, that came out really weird. I know that is really how society is built. Everything revolves around, you know, nine to five.

And the assumption is that people have nine to five jobs. But as we know in our industry, that's, most often not the case and it becomes a real issue when you're a carer you know it's not just women but if you are the primary carer for kids or you know you may have an elderly relative at home that you have to care for and you know sometimes early morning evenings are a challenge because you need to be there and even if you do have a supportive partner at home if they

are in a nine-to-five like by the time they're back home and you know you have dinner and everything you can't always take time and it's definitely like something that is so ingrained in society that we don't actually realize sometimes that there's a lot of people in in a different situation and it's not just us it's shift workers and you know social workers are often working in.

We think our evenings are free people adult people will be free in the evening but it's not really the case it's really nice hearing you i mean because we're the title and everything about this is women in sports therapy but knowing you very well and knowing how intelligent you are your most intelligence is huge because some people might think women in sports therapy is going to be very militant it's going to be very women need this women

need this men stop oppressing us you know stop waving your penis in front of us metaphorically or literally and just leave us alone we need to do this but you're not it's not really about that is it no it's not about that and i don't think it's about you know you said oppression or like just men not realizing the issues we face that's for sure a huge part i think that the biggest issue is with society how it's built especially in in this country uh you know maternity

services are not working our child care services are not working and how the entire workplace is.

It's not working for parents and again not just parents but people that have to care for for someone else or I would you know extend that to say for people in general because it's become so so challenging and if you live in a big city you think at eight hour shift plus an hour lunchtime plus you may have an hour to 90 minutes commuter like even in cities like London that's 10 11 12 hours of your day gone and you know it's a challenge it's not a good life anymore

and I think something needs to change and in terms of like women in sports therapy I think that the issue is dual yes there's you know a lot of things in society have been built by men so there's that tradition that we kind of have to to be bring awareness of first of all because a lot of people don't realize that a lot of men will not realize that but also women need to learn to to speak up and take their place and i think i mentioned this in the past i mentioned this that therapy expo therapy

expo has always been and any expo any in other industries as well you know most speakers are men and there's actually research about this saying that most speakers in a lot of industries tend to be men most podcasts and we need to have that courage to say no we we're good as well we can do this and we should do this so take our space. And show everyone else that we can do this so that more women then you know.

Will speak up and take their place and fulfill their potential, that's really interesting and i remember time means nothing now it could be five years ago It could have been 10 years ago, but.

There was it was it erupted this fact we started talking about manuals and how like you say a lot of guests were men and i remember talking to jack chew the physio matters about it because he's had loads and loads of guests and and you know he was i think he was criticized once if you know you only have blokes on it and he was like whoa whoa whoa hold on if you could see the amount of emails that i send out asking female guests to come on the show and half of them either don't reply

maybe because they can't reply or they're not free he says it's not that i'm trying to avoid them it's simply because something in society means that they just don't come forward and one of the most common bits of feedback we get from the show which is so nice and we really really love it when we get these emails is when people like yourself or the other female guests we've had on the show we've had like i used to count it but now i

know it's at least 50 50 in fact i think we're dipping our feet into more women than male guests it's just we get feedback saying it's so spying and it's made other sports therapists or massage therapists actually get involved more in public speaking or standing up for themselves or talking out where normally they'd kind of shelter back so there is quite a lot of confidence I think involved in it which again might be the fault of men in a patriarchal society but I think confidence is an issue.

Yeah confidence is definitely an issue I mean there's research even in like workplace settings and you know looking for jobs and interviews where they've noticed that men apply even when they have you know less than 50 percent of the skills that are required and women tend not to apply unless they can fulfill 100 percent of the skills that you know the ad is describing so there's definitely something that is kind of

ingrained in us if you know make wanting to to make sure that we can do something and we can do it well before. I don't know, come in public probably. There's a little bit of that fear. Probably a lot of that is from tradition and, again, how we are raised to be in our place, to be good girls. And the discussion could be huge and is probably something with psychologists because there's a lot from there.

It's not just how we act in our jobs. but it's great to see that there's more and more women and I think it started with academia as well we know academia used to be really male-centered all professors and tutors were male and slowly more women got into academia and then because of of that and research as well there's more people coming from those environments and you know speaking at expos speaking on podcasts and and showing that that we can we can do this but we can be here and sometimes

you don't need to be you know super expert or a researcher or you know someone with 30 years experience that to to share your experience so sometimes it's it's just about that it's not about knowledge. It's great. Brilliant. I look at you and people who listen to podcasts, you can't see something at the moment, but I've read about you. I think I first saw you advertised, you were on TherapyX, but I had to meet you before and you were speaking with Jack Cairo Rob. Yeah, Rob.

And I'd read about you and what stood out probably just because I love strength and conditioning and stuff was like, oh, Italian deadlift or whatever it was like. What was the title you held? Yeah, it was the deadlift record. I had that for a few years. It was broken by some youngsters, these young people. Some youngsters. And they're super strong. You were probably that youngster's inspiration. She probably had a poster of you on the wall somewhere or another. And then, obviously, I met you.

And the preconception I had between any kind of female Italian deadlift one, I felt so guilty afterwards thinking, wow, this girl is going to be gunned up and stacked.

And and then people can't see you but you're not somebody who you'd walk by and think well yeah they're definitely a deadlift champion but how did you get into it was was that kind of in your history a battle a little bit of sexes or just proving it or standing out I wouldn't say a battle of sexes it was more like probably like a battle against myself and my limited beliefs so I I mean I've been in sports my entire life is, you know, why I do this job.

I actually, so I was a figure skater and track and field athlete in my youth. I had an injury that meant I had to stop skating or at least I had to stop skating at the level I wanted to be. Because I was trying to be in the national team where Italy is one of the strongest nations actually in roller skating.

And then from there, I took a completely different route. I went into marketing and communication and, you know, did bachelor, master's, started working in Italy, moved to UK, started working in offices, realized this is really not for me. I can't sit at a desk.

And then, you know, what do I want to do? And I always had this feeling I want to do something for people like me, athletes that got injured and never had the help they needed because my injury got mismanaged.

And it's a big part of why I couldn't continue. and then while I was going through that process I started joining a gym again I've never been a gym person because you know I was a 90s kid so you grow up thinking you have to be you know small and lean and not muscly and the gym is a scary place for women you think you get bulky but I joined the gym and then I discovered CrossFit so I got into the CrossFit world I started doing I mean

my competitive nature resurfaced so I started doing some small competitions in CrossFit, from there, weightlifting. And whenever I was in CrossFit or in a weightlifting environment, I was always told by coaches and I knew myself as well that I was.

The person that moved well and it was gymnastic and agile but I wasn't strong I was able to do like really big weights for the strength I had so it was always kind of the limiting factor you're not a strong person and then one day in the gym we were playing around we were doing like some of the guys were doing rug pulls and I was just trying my dad and Lisa had always been probably my strongest lift and I always loved it and doing rack pulls I managed to like pull three times my body weight

from the rack that was with straps and like above the knee so it didn't count anything but I was like oh this would be amazing if it was my actual deadlift and a couple of years down the line I was like you know what I can't really train weightlifting because I wasn't around CrossFit gyms I was working with teams I was working in clinics I couldn't make to make it to like a gym that had space with platforms and proper barbells so I started thinking maybe I should try power lifting like

you have squat rack and bench everywhere I can train that anywhere and I had this thing of maybe I should try to make that that lift a reality and then I think within a couple of months of training powerlifting, I actually managed to pull 160. That was like three times my body weight. And I did my first competition and then everything evolved from there. So what did you weigh at the time when you did the 160? So I was around, yeah, 56 feet, 57.

No, wait, that time probably a bit lighter. I was probably 54, 55 when I started. And then I was competing as a under 57 lifter. So when I did my record, so the highest pool I had in a competition was... Wait 183 and a half and a half because that's how you put records and in a competition and that was as under 57 so it was 56 kilos so it was a bit over the three times.

Amazing and i guess knowing that the reason i love hearing about that is it kind of explains i think for people who go and see what you talk about people go and sort of are amazed at how inspiring you are and the motivation you give others i guess it all boils down a lot to your own personal experiences and you know you've been there you've had the battles you've had people doubting you telling you can't do that yeah and so passing that

on that's the wonderful thing i think about our career isn't it when you can inspire others can you draw upon that personal experience and yeah amazing yeah for sure and i think like everything i went through with my injury always helped me for sure in you know the elite sport settings like getting the younger athletes to to know I understood them because I've been an athlete as you know a young person and then as an adult I was you know going back to Italy like trying through COVID

to fly back so I could compete there so I could be considered for the national theme and you know there are other struggles that people that have not been in sport sometimes don't don't realize and understand and then it can be it can look like a charming life when you know you see athletes on tv or on the media but there's a lot of challenges that they face and i think it's always good for them to know that someone can understand it from within from their own experience

and then i mean that evolves so over over the years now is you know with women. I had a chat a couple of weeks ago with someone that is.

You know, just discovered they're pregnant and they want to continue training, but they are confused. They don't know what to do. So it's reassuring. You don't have to have had an experience to be a great therapist or a great coach, or, you know, I'm not saying that unless you have gone through something, you can help a person going through something, but it helps. It helps with, you know, them feeling they can trust you and having that little bit of reassurance for sure.

Yeah, I love hearing that. So I always remember, I think it was probably Dr. Gary Mendoza we had on the show a couple of times talking about motivational interviewing and that. And some people think that to show empathy, you need to have experienced what the person's gone through. But if that's what you use to try and connect with the person going, oh, yeah, I've done that. Oh, yeah, that happened to me. That's not empathy at all.

That is turning the conversation away from them and onto yourself. So people get confused with that. And you can show empathy. You don't have to have experienced it. It's all to do with the language you use and opening up the dialogue for that person and listening and that sort of stuff so but it does help if you've got empathy if you're a good communicator and you've experienced it then that's pretty powerful I think.

Yeah for sure and I think there is a there are some little things and little you know shades that unless you've gone through something you don't really fully appreciate even if you have a lot of empathy you're a really good listener and you know you research and you try your best there is sometimes some little shadows that i think you can only fully appreciate if you have gone through something and like what you're saying as well is like you can if you have gone through something you

can also appreciate that you don't want the other person to say oh yeah i've gone through that like oh yeah i have experience of that but like it's easier sometimes to just be there for the person because you know how it feels on on the other side do you think and and by the way we're straying totally away from the questions I was going to ask you but it's just so interesting I think it's really interesting to listen to because now I'm thinking is there do you

think male therapists have maybe a fear of not being able to help female therapists because they haven't been through it because they haven't been pregnant because they haven't kind of gone through the menstrual cycle and and it's cheeky for them I mean is that a good example of where they feel like I can't be empathetic with this person because I don't know what they're, I mean, I think that question is more for you than for me. Like, I don't know. I haven't been there, but I...

You know, before becoming a mom, for sure, I was thinking I have a good understanding of this physiologically. I have a good understanding of what the body's gone through, like it goes through like pregnancy and childbirth. And afterwards, I have a good understanding of what women go through emotionally and psychologically. But as I was saying, there is some little things that I probably didn't fully appreciate until I became a mom. And I think it's probably really similar for men.

I mean, even just not having, you know, a monthly period, like you can't fully appreciate like the pain that some women are in. Like even more so with endometriosis and conditions that can take years to be diagnosed. Like women get dismissed by doctors. We know that's a huge problem in healthcare even now. So, yeah, I'm sure there is some of that.

And for sure there are great therapies that really do help women but probably i would say they do question themselves sometimes whether they know enough yeah i don't know that's more that's more for you like what's that or what suggestion would you give it was it's a leading question because i personally believe i think kind of what i said before is to show empathy and to be a great communicator and help someone you don't have to experience what they're doing

And this is particularly relevant if you're a male therapist helping a female therapist, because if we look at the low-hanging fruit, sure, if it really is at a higher level to experience exactly the pain they're talking about or the emotional distress, then that's different.

But the lower-hanging fruit of listening to somebody and then having that, being able to introduce a little bit of education along the way in a way that's going to help them absorb it and reflect and change their behaviours, I think guys...

Thanks to people like yourself and this is why i'm going to ask this is what i'm talking about because i think one of the goals of wist is not just to look after women it's to kind of empower guys as well which we'll talk about in a sec but there's an awful lot of information that male therapists can take from you guys and use to help women and i don't again now i'm going to put myself in the place of a woman but i in the case of female patients i've talked to they're really not

bothered if you're a male or a female you're a human and they need a human to talk to i think you know so i think people want to know that they are the person in front of them that is is meant to help them is there for them and is gonna listen and is someone that they can trust they're not gonna care whether you know some people may have a preference but generally speaking people are not gonna care if you are a woman or a man if you're younger if you're older is more how you

relate to them and how you communicate with them and that's a whole different skill set that unfortunately most courses and schools don't teach but like if you can do those things really well it doesn't really matter the the problems I think surface when someone hasn't got those communication skills and comes out a little bit like preaching or lecturing then of course the first reaction which is normal psychological reaction is like.

Like, why are you trying to tell me that? Like, you don't even know. Like, yeah, you might know, you know, from the books, but you haven't experienced this. And I think it's something we can really relate to because it's something we often face with doctors. I had so, like, honestly, I think in the last two years, most of my burnout issues have been fighting mainstream health care. And I have a couple of conditions that are not really well understood.

They don't really give me problems day to day, but they are not really well understood and they need a certain type of management. And the worst is going to a doctor, to a GP and being told something when you know it's wrong. In courses, we are told, or at least I've heard this a thousand times, if you meet someone with a specific condition, whether it's rare, whatever it is, they are the expert of their condition in their body.

So listen to them. so the worst thing you can do is just tell them oh no but it's not like that because this condition works this way and it's like no it doesn't not always not in my experience and I have it you barely know what is so yeah I think you you can do a lot to help people if you if you listen and you you understand that even if they don't know anything about their body and they don't know anything about therapy and how we you know recover from injuries

they are still the expert of their body and their experience so that should be like your like your guiding post that that's what you have to take in consideration whatever you know about the body that's what matters the most. Definitely. Great advice. That's going to be the little clip I choose to get on social media. You look so serious when you're saying that. It's perfect. Great. No, amazing, amazing words. Don't forget, people, if you are joining

us live, I thank you very much. I hope to put questions in there. Nikki has had a reaction to your deadlift record. I knew she'd provide to that. My deadlift for one hour RM was just over one times my body weight, 80K. And that was a trap bar. Nikki, it's all relative. You know, it's fine. I'm sure you experienced a massive high being able to do that. And thanks, Nikki, for also, I just saw earlier on, you said she's squeezing us in between her Pilates class and her first client of the day.

Great time management. Yeah, thank you for being here. And, you know, deadlifts is one of those women are scared of deadlifts, probably more than men, for no reason that I can see. It's just something, I mean, we are constantly fed in media, deadlifts are not safe. And I think that's, you know, you've been to my therapy expo talks, that's being covered.

Quite a while and this year I'm gonna expand a little bit you know about that for women especially around pregnancy I think we can so many women can lift a lot more than they are lifting and there's a fear of weights fear of you know getting bulkier bigger not having been around gyms enough to feel confident feel that you know the weight section can be scary depending on the gym can be especially if it's really like bodybuilding style gyms the looks

but I think so many women can do so much more and it's just about coaching and keep doing the lifting and yeah I really enjoyed if people are listening well we're going to talk about your what you're doing at therapy expo shortly but it just reminded me of kind of.

Your journey and it wasn't kind of one of these kind of like hello magazine journeys of you having a baby and you weight training with it but you posted some stuff on there which just kind of showed again in a wonderfully here's a little look what i'm doing i'm not forcing upon you and it won't be right for everybody but it just showed because you were kind of told i think the guidelines were like don't pick up anything heavier than a hat and bag or something in the

first yeah i mean the guidelines are still like those like don't lift more than a couple of pounds and it's like why like I'm so much more I'm so much stronger than that why should I stop lifting weights just because I'm pregnant like women have been going through pregnancies working in the fields working in in all different type of settings and for sure health care and safety you know wasn't the same under 200 or 500 years ago but like women can do amazing things and finally research

is kind of catching up to that. In CrossFit, we have seen like some something that is just unbelievable, like women giving birth and six days later, being sectionals to try to make it to the games. This means that like that person was eight, nine months pregnant doing workouts as prescribed, full weights.

Full movements, including gymnastics, like muscle ups, and then giving birth and six days later being in the gym with full weights and you know doing muscle ups which is of course you know outliers but like women are able to to do this like there's some women's doing amazing things so we really need that research to to catch up and ensure that no you don't have to stop lifting weights and you know if there's moms of multiple kids they know there's no way you are not going

to pick up your toddler, that is not going to be two pounds. So yeah, it's so limiting and it's really fear mongering, which is the worst for me, like the worst part of it.

Amazing right yeah I really want to hear more before we go into your I want to I've got to stick to the script to get some stuff out yeah so but we're definitely going to talk more about your presentations therapy expert for people who are listening who don't know what we're talking about with women in sports therapy it's WIST and it's yourself and Gemma and Sarah so that's Gemma Pouzas and Sarah Packard and you're kind of the new voices to something that was started off a while back by

fiona and deborah and one of the things i'm interested so there is a podcast there people in case you're listening started off in 22 i think and there's quite a few great episodes amazing guests you were one of the guests on one of them yeah and so people should check out the women in sports therapy podcast at the older episodes the v1 episodes as we'll call them but v2 now is i love the way you say it's not going to be just a podcast now it's going to be kind of a community

so before we go and talk about therapy expert give us a little idea of what. People can expect to be happening in the future with regards to WIST community. So yeah, when we started chatting about like what can we do and like we realized like me, Sarah and Gemma, we were all saying, yeah, the podcast is great, but the podcast tends to be like one-sided. There is one side presenting to the audience.

And even if you have different guests, even if you go live there's not that much interaction and yes you can cover topics but like that interaction that connection is always missing and especially as women the moms there we talked at the beginning of this conversation about the issues of sometimes you know showing up live so even if you are really interested in something and you have questions if you can't be there if you listen to a recording it's not going to be the same experience even

if those people are you know available to answer questions later it's still not the same experience there's no connection so we were always all saying we want this to be something else something more and we thought about creating a community the SDA is great it has a great website sorry a great Facebook group that is really active but sometimes like you might feel a little bit you know you don't want to share some struggles

or put some questions in an open group and we feel that it's not just women's health questions but about business about those fears that we were talking about you know showing up and you know.

Speaking up in expos etc sometimes you do want that like female environment and feeling safer in that environment so we thought okay we need a community we need to be something more and be there for for women and allow them to to voice their concerns and come to us telling us what they really need so the community opened yesterday we had the first few people joining there would be more and more happening there and what we aim to do with that is really having people feel

more confident also by helping someone else because if I post a struggle and someone has gone through there we want that person to answer with their experience with their advice so they don't need to be one of us like it's not just you know advice from us we want to lead the way so that.

More women can be there supporting one another we we are not you know the main experts in in this field Sarah for sure has done a lot more with women's health but then I have limited experience I'm not scared of of saying that I do work with like pregnant women and postpartum women but it's never been the sole focus of what I do so yeah we need everyone else to contribute and do more and the community is going to be just for women but then we are still gonna

continue with the podcast other resources and even meet and greet at therapy expo where as you were saying earlier we want men to be part of the discussion and tell us like their fears like you were saying what challenges they face when when treating female patients so what they want to know so that we can, with time, create those resources as well.

Amazing. Sounds amazing. And if listeners are interested in hearing about this firsthand, then as I said before, you're going to be yourself and Gemma, not Sarah, sadly, I believe she's going to be sunning herself somewhere. But Gemma and you are going to be presenting Women in Sports Therapy, Building a Stronger Community. And that's going to be on day one of Therapy Expo this November, which is like three weeks away. Oh my God, it is. I know.

We better get right in our presentation, Sonia. I think it's like the ding, ding, Bill. But yeah, so 27th, So we'll be on the day one on the Wednesday at 10.15am in the STA theatre. So if you are going to therapy expert, it'll be an amazing way to start the day. And in fact, prior to that, unfortunately, Michelle Lyons was going to be chatting before you guys and then joining you for the women's sports therapy, building a strong community.

But unfortunately, Michelle can't be along at therapy expert this year. But Michelle has put us in contact with a colleague, Christiane Byrd, co-founder of Menopause Movement, who is going to be stepping in for Michelle, which is wonderful news. Christiane is going to be delivering a session called Power the Paws, the pelvic floor and more. And that will be directly before the Women in Sports Therapy, Building a Strong Community, and they should be joining you.

So it's still going to be a great morning for therapists who are interested in helping women in sports therapy and being women in sports therapy and working with either female patients and other therapists so that includes guys as well and it'd be a really interesting conversation and reflection so i'm going to bring this up for people who tell us that they love a bit of imagery on youtube that's what youtube is all about so you can see on there when that's going to

be but as we can also see and this is where if you listen to the podcast you might want to go along to youtube just have a look at the screenshot of all the things that sonja's doing you've got a pretty busy day one sonja have you planned this to collapse after day one and then just keep your feet up for day two?

No I think it's just it's my ongoing issue of not really being good at saying no and yeah I can do that for sure let's go and then realizing oh actually everything is on day one because usually I had two talks in, like as a keynote presentations and they would were day one and day two but because of my daughter and, you know, struggling to be away a couple of days from home.

Therapy Expo was really kind to put everything in day one. And then, you know, it was the SDA panel and they were like, oh, do you want to be on this panel? Like, yeah, sure. I didn't even check the times. And it's like, oh, okay, I'm going to be bouncing off one end to the other all day. But it's always a lot of fun. So I don't mind. You really are though. Yeah. Just we'll need a hand signal for coffee or whatever your poison is on that day.

Just we'll need a code word and I'll just make sure that you get brought one because you're going to be bouncing around. Let's have a little look at what else you're doing apart from the WISP presentation. So like we say, that's going to be 10, 15 in the morning in the STA therapy update theatre. And then at 11.05, so you've got 25 minutes to get it. That's pretty cool.

You're going to get over to theatre B and that's me at 11.05, empowering pregnant and postpartum athletes debunking myths and optimizing recovery in the new era of exercise we've already kind of touched a little bit on that but what are your goals for people who attend that to walk away with i would say definitely to be aware of more recent research that has been showing the lifting weights and things like the valsava maneuver so holding breath or even laying on your back and benching when

you are pregnant are not actually as risky as once thought so that if women are involved in in these sports or even impact sports like there's women running really late in their pregnancies now that is is okay and we can support these women rather than being a bit scared ourselves as therapists and you know scaring them off from from doing anything I mean birth is one of the hardest things that women will go through in their life at least physically

and I really think you know you need a strength foundation for it for that so you need to keep exercising some women will struggle because of other symptoms like nausea and not feeling really well or energy levels that's absolutely fine but like if you feel you can you you know you shouldn't be. Just scared of doing more, like all the functional fitness, let's say, activities and lifting and more high intensity. There's new research also about like raising your heart rate.

We were always told, oh, you should then really raise your heart rate. It's dangerous. And it doesn't actually seem to be the case.

And then as we were saying earlier about postpartum as well, I think there is a things don't really work how they are now like we have this six weeks check and you're told ready to go but there's women that would have done you know really good recovery in those six weeks I would have started some rehabilitation some pelvic floor work and some they've done nothing and then there will be some that you know maybe are just home with their first newborn baby and they can rest and

they have lots of support and some that have to go back you know to fairly physical jobs at six weeks and we are kind of lacking in UK that we have that protective period and if there's listeners from like America we know that that's a huge problem there where they don't even have that protection and sometimes they're thrown in really physical jobs straight away and they can't afford to take time off because they don't have maternity leave and we need to learn how to support these

people when they can't rest and they have to go through that record very but at the same time support the ones that they want to go back in sport and not just saying no because you are four weeks postpartum and you shouldn't do anything because some people will be able to so we should support not stop them fantastic so it's going to help therapists to attend it's going to help empower therapists to empower the women and kind

of spread a little bit of better information and yeah excellent yeah and then following with the Q&A with you. Yeah, exactly. It's true, yeah, because that's how we mentioned like last week when we were chatting with all the Therapy Expo people, Molly and Vernon and... Charlotte, how this year the STA Theatre, a lot of the people who started off in the STA Theatre are now keynote speakers in that, which is amazing.

So rather than trying to compete with that, we're offering opportunities for people to come and see the keynote speakers in the STA Theatre for a more kind of intimate Q&A session, which people love. And it's like you were kind of touching on earlier, it's real healthy interaction. The interaction there is a great way of learning. The main theatres are amazing to expose you to information.

It's probably a good idea for some people to take a pen and paper along because otherwise you just get home and think, I remember but nothing. My head's just gone. What did I see then? Yeah, for sure. But the Q&A sessions and that in the STA theatre hopefully will be a chance for you to reflect. So yeah, we've got you after Theatre B. We've given you 15, oh, 35 minutes, pretty generous to get there. And then yeah, you'll be doing a Q&A on that very topic for 25 minutes in the STA theatre.

Then you get a chance for a little bit of lunch. Nice. Don't go too far though, because at 2.50, you're in Theatre C, And that's going to be a presentation entitled Challenging Women's Health Inequalities Within the Therapy Sector. Without giving too much of it away, what are people likely to gain from visiting that? Well, it's going to be a panel. So hopefully that's also going to be, there's going to be some interaction with the audience.

Matt is not just me, there is other therapists on that one. And we really want to, you know, kind of Oh, I'm missing the word there. Sorry. Give our experiences. Give is not the right word, but like you guys.

Share. Share was the word. Share our experiences. And then the experiences we had with our patients and what they've been going through and all those struggles and what we can or at least what we think we could do to better support women and women's alpha and all the issues we see within the sector. Fantastic. And that's actually 45 minutes in there. So that'll be a really good chance for people to go along there in one of the big theatres to get involved as well.

And obviously, again, for both male and female therapists, hugely important. Because people forget, don't we? I mean, at least half of your therapists are going to be not the same sex as you. They're going to be male or female. So we really need to talk about these topics together. Amazing. And that's what we were doing that day. So pretty light.

Nice. and in between you'll probably find me like apart from the coffee and lunch breaks around the STA stand I'll be there with Gemma representing WIS and we want to meet as many therapists as we can so do come and search for us we would love to hear more from you about what you want to see from WIS the support you feel you need topics you want covered and just to meet you like in person. So yeah, I'll be hanging around the SDA stand.

Fantastic. For you, waiting for you. It'll be, and next to the SDA stand as well, we've got properly signed posts this year, the Speakers Lounge as well. So that'll be a chance for you people as well to have a chat with the speakers who are free and not running around too much, but that'll be really cool as well.

Last year, I think it became a little bit of a kind of a storage space for Anna Maria Maccieri, but this year we're going to police that and she's got strict lines of yeah so so that can be fun yeah i think it would be really nice i really like the format that like it's been created this year with therapy expo because i find that a lot of people are not really feeling the questions in the main theaters it can be again i need to be scary like some theaters like some of the presentations

is like a full theater with people standing i had a couple of those and i know i can it can feel scary to ask a question there and i will often find that oh anybody has any questions silence no not really and then as you are like trying to exit the theater like you have people stopping you and coming to ask questions so i love the you know having the q a in the sda theater later on so it's a more informal setup you're closer to the audience and whoever has questions can come there and have them

answered and we can dig a little bit deeper in what I'll cover with the presentation. Dig a little bit deeper. That's good. Exactly what we'll do. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing I love about Therapy Expo. And it has sounded like the last five months in the lead up to it. We've just been kind of like really going on about it. But they do listen to feedback and they are trying to make it an educative experience as well.

Because we're well aware, we all know it, that you go to a conference and if you just see too much and take in too much, you literally do wake up on Monday or whenever it is and just think, I've got nothing out of that. I don't remember anything it's just an overload you can't learn.

That way but you like going to trying to do a degree in three months just non-stop back to back you need to live it absorb it and take it in so yeah and I think when you try to have too much and too many topics and everything a little bit different becomes also a bit superficial so a lot of the talks end up being all these like nice little words or giving examples but like not really giving people and impractical that they can take with them and that's what people

want from expos they want to learn something that they can apply or at least that that can spark an interest and then go and learn more but I think yeah that unless the expo really put some work into into the program and trying linking the presentations it ends up being a bit like a bit of this a bit of that nothing really in-depth whereas this year they've done a great a great job and day one is it's really women's health focused and one of the theaters is really women's

health focused which is is great because we know especially from last year that there was a lot of interest around those topics so yeah I'm I'm really looking forward to to this new setup and I think people will love it. Excellent. Great. I don't know whether it's possible for you to think about post-therapy expo, but what else have you got kind of planned apart from the WISC stuff? Have you got anything else that you're doing with Recover Stronger?

In a little bit of like, I've been pausing and trying to figure out how to better set up things for myself because I'm facing some of those women's challenges with workload and life in general. So I'm trying to rejuggle everything. I have a slightly new format for just clients coming up in terms of like training and how they can work with me. And in terms of therapists, I'm still running kind of on, I'm not really advertising this as much, but like mentorships, like one-on-one mentorships.

I did plan to launch a course last year but then I kind of paused on that because it was becoming just too much with everything else so hopefully that will happen at some point in 25 but I'm not I'm not quite sure when and how yet so yeah if anyone is interested in getting some support I do run one-on-one mentorships for therapists generally they are focused on well they're like either business help because I've run my own businesses, a gym, a clinic, online or telehealth work.

There are not many therapists too. And all the communication marketing as well as communication with patients. So I've been helping a few therapists too. Really juggle how they offer their services and how they interact with their patients so that their retention rates have improved and their rehabilitation adherence has improved because that's you know it's one of the biggest issues we face people don't do their exercises.

Amazing and that's so i mean best for people want to keep in touch with that instagram is still the main place for people to follow you yeah yeah so what makes that goes in the show notes but that is if you're listening you've got a pen and paper handy then that is sonia.recoverstronger so

sonia.recoverstronger on instagram and this is a great feed like i say you can go back and there's so much valuable information in there going back years and years so have a little look at that and then also if anything you've been interested in regarding women in sports therapy then you can follow that across social media and that's at uk underscore wist It's W-I-S-T, so UK underscore W-I-S-T. Obviously, that will be, as always, on the show notes.

And, yeah, but if you are going to Therapy Expo, then now you know what to do on day one. Your day one is now planned out. Yeah. And join Sonia on her journey. Follow me around. And, yeah, we'd love to see you there. And also, like Sonia said, and it's so important as well, do come and say hello to us at Therapy Expo. We've said it so many times, it's not just going to presentations.

It's the conversations you have with other therapists in between those talks, which probably are going to stay in your head because you're going to be interacting and talking and remembering and reflecting. So do come and say hello, particularly as Gary Benson has magnificently said, if you're going to therapy by yourself, which is why Gary set up the STA in the first place.

He doesn't want anybody to be alone or feel alone. So if you are going to therapy by yourself and you're not quite sure and you're feeling a bit of a daunting process, just come to the STA. It doesn't matter if you're a member or not. You soon will be a member because you'll just realise how amazing we are.

But come along just say hi we heard the podcast and i'm just first time here i wanted a bit of guidance bam you will be probably taken to a corner by somebody over six foot six there's a high chance that person will be over six foot six so don't worry about that it's just coincidence, and uh and yeah you'll be looked after.

Amazing right well thank you so much Sonia for giving up your time really appreciate it and for people who joined us live and thank you very much if you do if you listen to the podcast and you want to join us live next week we're still going to we're still bringing you news and speakers who are going to therapy expo next week we'll be back to the normal time of eight o'clock on the tuesday and that's me with james earls of born to move and born to walk who's a fantastic favorite therapy

expo as well and a really really nice bloke on top of everything a wonderful educator so james will be joining me next week Tuesday at eight o'clock in the evening sorry I was just reading a Nikki's comment let's say Nikki Mansfield let's say if I buy you and that can I read this out loud if I buy you and Anna Maria each an espresso will you let me just stand there and listen while you talk Italian to each other about absolutely anything you want asking for

a language gig yeah it's a beautiful experience isn't it just watching Anna Maria and Sonny Fierro it's true I should have that photo in our hand if I haven't got it but um yeah there will be more Italian magic I'm sure at therapy expert as well yes yeah we can send this to anna maria i'm sure she will be happy to as as long as there is a press involved i'm sure she'll be happy to it's one of my jobs across the day yeah fantastic well thanks again sonny i

really appreciate spending time with you and see you in person in like three weeks or something yes yeah putting your presentations together there yeah we need to get onto the onto there not to be uh like running with you know my little.

Usb stick yeah last week yeah usb stick like every year it's like sorry i'm late guys but yeah this is here this year's gonna be different is it sonia i don't know i always plan for yeah to be more organized we'll see we'll see that's good at least this is giving us both of both of us believe me both of us giving a three-week call so we can we can crack on with that yeah yeah right thanks everybody really appreciate it as always until we meet again just take care of each other bye bye. Music.